When “Christian Leaders” Divorce Scripture and Destroy Families, Part I: Tim Yarbrough’s Ministry of Abuse
When “Christian Leaders” Divorce Scripture and Destroy Families, Part I: Tim Yarbrough’s Ministry of Abuse
[This is Part 1 of a three-part post chronicling a real-life nightmare scenario that would benefit greatly from prayers and help from the Church. Those with questions or an interest in helping are encouraged to text (if you have my number) or email me directly at Scott@FireBreathingChristian.com. Thank you!]
When “Christian Leaders” Divorce Scripture and Destroy Families, Part I: Tim Yarbrough’s Ministry of Abuse
What would you do if a “Reformed Christian Elder” had systematically abused justice in an attempt to destroy your family?
What would you do if this member of a “conservative, Bible-believing” Presbyterian church had covertly promoted and financed an unbiblical divorce, and then went on to advance that divorce in wildly unethical/unbiblical ways?
What would you do if you had just finished a wave of polygraph testing that supported every key point you had always claimed about this sad story? (A report accompanying one of these tests is presented at the end of this initial three-part post.)
What if you witnessed this Presbyterian Elder’s “ministry” groom your wife in accordance with his Woke worldview and business model, helping to transition her from an honest woman into a “ministry advocate” willing to lie repeatedly under oath while receiving major financial benefits and “religious cover” for blowing up her family?
What if this grooming process led your wife to reject the passions that once defined her life and immensely benefited your children (home education, vibrant homemaking, and active daily mothering)? What if, in order to entice her in this direction, this Presbyterian Elder’s “ministry” offered many benefits, including:
large financial payouts (from the “ministry” and its allies),
free rent, utilities, and anything else that you might need,
help soliciting money from others by pushing a narrative of lies (addressed here later via polygraph),
help successfully ripping children from their father and home through abuse of the legal system,
help slandering your husband online and off,
help loading up on welfare-state benefits,
help trading away most mother-time with little children in exchange for cog-in-the-machine jobs,
and help swapping out the children’s Christ-centered home education in exchange for government-run children’s indoctrination.
This “ministry” approach is all part of a well-worn Woke playbook that begins by promoting divorce without even speaking with the husband. By the time the husband is only beginning to become aware of what is about to be done to his family by this “Presbyterian Elder”-led crew, the “ministry” already has a narrative of lies agreed upon and a mountain of resources (financial and otherwise) have been dumped into the lap of the accusing wife …all with no care for how any of these things are to be handled biblically. Disdain for biblical truth (and truth in general) is the norm here.
What if this “ministry”-run evisceration of justice was used to keep five little children away from the father and home they adore for well over a year? …and counting… (a separation that would never have been possible apart from the lies spun under oath and addressed here via polygraph)?
What would you think of the “Reformed Presbyterian Elder” leading that kind of “ministry”?
Sadly, these are not merely hypotheticals. They are references to real-world horrors shamelessly perpetrated over the past two years by Tim Yarbrough, a Reformed Presbyterian Elder platformed by the Free Presbyterian Church of North America. Each of these points will be addressed in this introductory post, with more detail to follow in future media as I work with legitimate Christian and secular ministries to help those who have been abused by “abuse advocacy” groups and faux-Christian ministries like Yarbrough’s. Apologies in advance for the length of this initial three-part installment, but there’s a lot of foundation to lay for material to come.
First, a bit of history for context…
“Reformed Christian Churches” as Hotbeds of Abuse
In mid-2022, my wife was in a very fragile and vulnerable state. We had just suffered the loss of her much beloved 59-year-old mother while simultaneously enduring a traumatic residential relocation for our family of seven. Our five kids loved the new place and had quickly made many friends in the neighborhood (which is wonderfully loaded with children of the same ages as ours). We were struggling to rebound from what we’d just been through, but the new rental home and neighborhood was an excellent start.
Our relocation came after we were compelled to leave an abusive church situation run by another “Reformed Christian Elder”, Geoffrey Botkin, who was removed from that position following a long and damaging reign after we brought his abusiveness to light. Yarbrough ran in the same circles as Botkin and participated in many of Botkin’s “church”-run conferences, speaking at Christ the King Church (CKC) many times.
While planning our exit from CKC, we (along with another large, long-term CKC family that shared many of our concerns and was also leaving CKC) reached out to Yarbrough for help since we knew that he and Botkin were antagonistic toward one another. What we learned from Yarbrough about Botkin’s operation confirmed our concerns (and then some), and what I have learned since then about Yarbrough’s worldview in practice has convinced me that the reason he and Botkin overlapped so much and were mutually supportive for so long is that they both abuse Scripture and people in the same ways. (Much more on this in future posts.)
I now see clearly why these abusers ran in the same circles and “preached” at the same events. This terrible experience with these “Reformed Christian” abusers was a major cause of my wife’s confusion and vulnerability. In addition to losing her mother and in the middle of all of this overwhelming pain, loss, and upheaval, she was overloaded and struggling to process it all (which is completely understandable).
The so-called “Reformed Christian” community is apparently loaded with these types of abusive leaders (and people who will blindly follow their lead no matter what), which is one of the reasons that, as a Reformed Christian myself, I feel compelled to share this story.
Sometime shortly after our traumatic time at CKC, my wife became deeply connected with FPCNA Elder Tim Yarbrough and his “ministry”. Unknown to me at the time, Yarbrough and his allies communicated frequently with my wife over months while never reaching out to me at all to discuss anything about the divorce they ended up planning. Over that time, I saw her become more and more consumed with describing all sorts of things as “abuse”, even when they were nowhere near that category. This included mischaracterizing even genuinely kind words and actions from others. Genuinely kind acts were categorized as “love bombing” when she didn’t want to acknowledge them as kind acts and needed to repackage them as abuse to fit her new narrative. If the wrong friends said a kind word, it was “abuse”. If I brought her sushi or flowers on the way home from work (I brought her sushi at least twice a week and flowers at least once a week), this too was somehow evidence of abuse or manipulation.
The more immersed she became in her new Woke ideology and the closer she grew to her new Woke “allies”, the more she came to embrace new ideas about how almost anything can be categorized as “abuse” if framed a certain way. I witnessed many instances of Yarbrough and his “ministry” allies, in stark contrast to biblical principles, preaching that all kinds of “abuse” (including things that are nowhere near actual abuse) can justify divorce and that courts can be easily manipulated to make divorce very profitable for “abused” women if certain things are done in certain ways. As a part of this M.O., the accusing woman is informed of all the resources she could “get” out of a divorce (from the state and from her crushed target/husband) if certain types of abuse are claimed.
Groomed by Yarbrough “Ministry”
Along the way Yarbrough’s “ministry advocates” seemed to encourage her at every turn to think of anything potentially negative about me that could be spun into a greater negative. They would then latch on to every critique, believe it without question, and use each item as a building block to create a completely distorted and almost entirely fictional portrayal of me as some kind of “controlling patriarchal monster” that could be fit neatly into their “abuse” template and Woke “ministry” business model.
From there Yarbrough and his “ministry” allies went on to covertly promote and fund an unbiblical divorce in wildly unbiblical ways. All still without even speaking with me about anything. This alone seems such an egregious violation of core biblical principles that I have no idea how anyone involved in such conduct is allowed to maintain membership in a biblical Christian church.
After encouraging her to believe that I was “a monster” (a term that she used in conjunction with the core false claims addressed here via polygraph), they provided many incentives (including financial) for my wife to lie and at times completely fabricate damning stories out of thin air. Amazingly, my wife was led down this path at the same time her sister launched her own divorce by making an extremely bizarre and devastating false claim of the most serious sort against her husband. That claim was later dropped completely after nobody took the charge seriously, including the sister, who eventually just moved along as if it was never brought up at all.
I now understand that the point of the accusation was never to have it proven true or even for the accuser to believe it to be true. The point of the charge was to shamelessly manipulate people (and courts) into viewing her case in a certain way that would devastate her husband, so it served its true purpose. That is how these women roll …and how they are encouraged to roll by abusive “Reformed Christian Presbyterians”.
As I have come to learn, the playbook run by these sisters is nothing new. It’s been around for as long as there have been people willing to lie, cheat, and do “whatever it takes” to get what they want. The end always justifies the means for these people. As part of their Woke worldview they believe that their “trauma” (real, imagined, or made up out of thin air) entitles them to inflict the heaviest of trauma on others, including their own children, if that’s what they feel necessary to flex their “agency”. (Much more on the weird Woke approach to “agency” later.)
The existence of this kind of playbook was not shocking to me. I just didn’t expect so many “conservative Reformed Christian Presbyterians” to be part of such obviously (and seriously) unbiblical conduct, but here we are.
Obviously, in order for a snake like Yarbrough to slither his way into my family this way, I had to have failed as a man in significant ways. This is certainly true, and while I am eager to own all of my actual sin, none of my failures come close to justifying divorce on biblical grounds. I believe this is why Team Yarbrough decided to make up so many things out of thin air.
One of the main reasons Yarbrough’s Ministry of Abuse is able to operate as it does is that real abuse does happen. There are abusive men, abusive patriarchs, and controlling types who do all of the things that Team Yarbrough has falsely accused me of doing. The fact that I am not and have never been controlling or abusive in any of the ways addressed here via polygraph in no way means that I do not believe that real abuses along those lines happen in many cases. They do happen. They just did not happen here, which is the point, and a critically important point if we are going to approach justice in a biblical manner rather than by using Yarbrough’s Woke/Marxist counterfeit version.
While I’m not aiming to absolve my wife of what have been very serious sins (false accusations of the sort she and her sister made are deadly serious), I am convinced, not just “in my heart” but also in my mind and soul, that she has been seriously abused and cruelly damaged by Tim Yarbrough and his allies as a result of her indoctrination and conversion into their Woke anti-biblical ideology.
By taking advantage of her as they have and encouraging her to travel so far down a path of lies and destruction, all in accordance with an explicitly anti-Christian Woke worldview, Yarbrough and his “ministry advocates” have practically cemented her into a position where she cannot acknowledge, much less repent of, her lies for fear of having her freshly manufactured Woke “victim” identity exposed as a complete farce.
When EVERYTHING is Abuse
Lest anyone reading this think that what I label as “things that are nowhere near actual abuse” might really qualify as abuse, here is an example of what I’m talking about:
My Yarbrough-influenced wife claimed in court documents that my providing her with child-support payments that were early and above the amount required constituted me being abusive because by not paying the exact amount on the first of the month, I was being controlling and manipulative by “making it hard for her to budget”.
Yeah, you read that right. Feel free to run through it again. And yes, this was submitted in writing. It was thought out, written out, and submitted with confidence to the court.
To my wife’s new Victim Card obsessed way of thinking, by paying her more than required and paying her earlier than required, I was demonstrating my abusiveness and disrespect for her “agency”. This is what months of grooming into Yarbrough’s Woke religion did to her ability to interact with reality. This is how desperately she seeks to find abuse under every pebble and around every corner, and she shares these sorts of things with real anger and arrogance over how she’s been “abused”. This is all “trauma”, you see, and, in Woke World it more than excuses any trauma that she may be causing by lying about…well…every major point covered here (and addressed via polygraph).
Prior to reading the court documents in question, never in my life had I heard of anyone complaining that getting paid too much and too early was “abuse”. (Where do I sign up for that abuse?) But in Yarbrough World anything and everything can be “abuse” when you need it to be abuse.
Aside from flat-out lying about major abuse claims, my Yarbrough-influenced wife became strongly inclined toward lying about even the tiniest of things in order to support his “ministry’s” BS narrative about me. Here’s an example:
In court testimony my wife angrily told the Judge that I had “offered to give [her] spoiled wine.” The claim was in reference to me having texted her a month or two before the best-by date on a boxed wine that I knew she liked, which was sitting in my home about to expire. I wasn’t going to drink it so, rather than throw it away in a month or two, I texted her to see if she wanted it. That’s it. Never heard back. Then, the next year she is sitting on the stand lying to the Judge about how I offered her “spoiled wine”. The way she now feels compelled to lie about big things, little things, and in-between things is downright creepy, but it is the norm since her (hopefully temporary) conversion to Yarbrough religion.
This is why I now find myself taking polygraph tests to address everything from major false accusations of abuse down to whether I ever offered anyone spoiled wine. At this point, I don’t know what else to do, but I am happy to do it if that’s what it takes to help others finally face the ugly truth that there is serious abuse underway here at the hand of Yarbrough and his “ministry”.
I am happy to take any polygraph or any other “lie-detector” test at any time over any of the key claims addressed here (and in future posts) and I will be sharing more polygraph test results as I address specific claims for as long as it takes to get actual Christians operating in Reformed Christian circles to finally stand up and apply biblical church intervention and discipline where it is desperately needed.
Though I have no idea where this story will ultimately go, I am sharing it now in hope that it might help bring biblical justice into this so-far nightmarishly unjust situation. It sure would be nice to see professing churches act like the actual Church for a change and take a real stand for biblical justice and the preservation of families who’ve been abused this way. I also hope to encourage and inspire others who have been shamelessly brutalized by the likes of Tim Yarbrough and his Ministry of Abuse. I have other hopes as well, but those will be shared later.
Tim Yarbrough’s Many Abuses of Truth, Justice, and My Family
It now seems very clear to me (and many others) that Tim Yarbrough and his “ministry” employ a Leftist-tested-and-approved approach to the perversion and manipulation of the justice system. This process employs key elements of Woke religion (masquerading as Christianity), including:
Woke Corruptions of Virtue and Justice
Yarbrough and his “ministry” allies manufacture abuse claims and spread false narratives often aimed at members of politically correct target groups, particularly those who could be described as “patriarchal” in their general approach to family – many on Team Yarbrough, like others infected with what Elon Musk calls “the Woke mind virus”, have a visceral disdain for patriarchy.
To support their false claims of abuse they promote extreme caricatures of targeted men (in line with the mentality driving the #MeToo and #BelieveAllWomen movements). They also use Woke percentage-based stats as justification for ignoring fundamental biblical principles of justice.
Yarbrough often excuses his dangerously unbiblical approaches (including assuming guilt out of the gate) by saying things like, “90% of the time the man is the abuser” and just treating that line as if it’s good enough to assume a woman is telling the truth without even talking with the man she’s accusing. (Which is exactly what he did in my case.) I have heard him do this many times and I have spoken with others who have witnessed it as well. The funny/not funny thing about it is that when he is confronted about how his approach is dangerously unbiblical, he just dismisses the concern and moves on. He doesn’t even engage with it. He acknowledges that the percentage-based “likelihood” approach to counterfeit justice inherently leads to many innocent parties being unjustly punished, but he doesn’t care. In Woke religions like Yarbrough’s, this weaponization of perverted justice is not a bug. It’s a feature.
Yarbrough types then take this Woke mutilation of justice, sprinkle on some “conservative Christian” lingo around the edges and the next thing you know, abracadabra: … #BelieveAllWomen is rebranded as #BelieveAllWeakerVessels and biblical justice has been obliterated in the name of “compassion” for manufactured “abuse victims”.Provoke, Pretend, and Pervert
For those familiar with the Problem, Reaction, Solution (PRS) formula often associated with the Hegelian Dialectic, this part of Yarbrough’s shtick will sound familiar. It goes like this:
Provoke your target. Like, for example, by secretly funding a divorce against him while never reaching out to talk with him even though you claim to be a trustworthy friend and brag about being an FPCNA Elder, then promote the spread of terrible lies about him, then arrive suddenly with “ministry” lackeys at his home on his son’s birthday right before the party was going to start, then surround his van so that he cannot leave, and then let him know that you’ll be living in his home for a week or two as you head into the living room. That’s a not-so-random example of what Ministry of Abuse provocation can look like. You could probably only do half of this to accomplish the provocation of almost any decent man. (Yes, Yarbrough did all of this with me.)
Pretend that your actions are totally legit.
Pervert your target’s totally reasonable reaction into something unreasonable. So when the man being abused by your “ministry” dares to get in your face and point out that he is being screwed over by you and your minions in a million different ways and that you don’t seem to give a crap about even the most basic biblical standards, you take that reaction and paint it as a bad act on the part of your target. Obviously you wish that you had provoked him into something much more serious (like giving you the beating you know you deserve), but he didn’t bite, so you have to work with what ya got, and by “work with” I mean “blatantly lie about”.
And get this: As the cherry on top of this toxic YBS sundae, you call your target the provocative one!
Yes, really!
And with a straight face!
You then report your target’s “provocative behavior” to the police and any other authority who will listen to an FPCNA Elder like you. (Thankfully, nobody bought this line of YBS for a second…but hey, he tried.)
There you have it: How to take yet another massive, premeditated dump on The Ninth Commandment in three easy steps that will almost always get your target to lash out against you in a way that you can happily use in court. It just didn’t work out that way this time.
Pretend to “Not Promote” Things that you are Totally Promoting
One of Yarbrough’s favorite responsibility-avoidance gimmicks is claiming that he isn’t really involved in things that he is obviously involved in. My favorite example of this came when, after being asked about whether or not he helped to promote and fund my divorce, Yarbrough’s response was to try to defend the indefensible by claiming that he did nothing to encourage my wife to file divorce because she had “already made up her mind” to file divorce when …he wrote the check to help fund it. So, in Yarbrough World, people just write checks for things that other people decide to do and that writing a check to finance something like a divorce in no way means that you are supportive of said divorce. Yeah, really. This is how Yarbrough rolls …and spins.Hide Behind the Women He Manipulates into “Ministry” Dependence
Before moving on from the previous example, we should note the way that Yarbrough frequently blames the women he manipulates for manipulating him into unbiblical behavior. By saying that he wrote a check to fund a divorce without speaking with the targeted husband because the accusing wife “had already decided to divorce”, this amounts to an epic self-own and revelation of extreme deception and cowardice. He signed his name to a check because she made a decision? Hardly. Tim Yarbrough put Tim Yarbrough’s signature on a check to finance a divorce because Tim Yarbrough wanted to make that divorce happen. To hell with truth, justice, and Scripture…and Tim Yarbrough should be held accountable for that.
It should not be surprising to find that Yarbrough plays the same Woke Victim Card games as his disciples.What is surprising is that this FPCNA-platformed Reformed Presbyterian is quite comfortable hiding behind the skirts (or pantsuits) of the Woke women he converts and abuses this way.
Cultivate Anger, Bitterness, and Rage
One of the foundational underpinnings of Yarbrough “ministry” is to encourage disciples to embrace anger and bitterness as justification for anything they want to do. Negative thoughts about a target are automatically accepted and amplified. Flames of this negativity (often based on outright lies) are fanned until they grow into a consuming fire. This fire of unrelenting rage is then used to justify acts of “agency” including the massive lies catalogued here. The whole Yarbrough method begins with and is sustained by the cultivation of rage.
Like a Sith lord from Star Wars, Yarbrough style “ministry” builds on a foundation of unbiblical anger and destructive, self-righteous rage, using those powerful emotions to manipulate disciples away from the light and ever deeper down the path to the Dark Side.Inhibit (or Outright Oppose) Repentance
Hand-in-glove with his cultivation of family-destroying rage, Yarbrough inhibits the one thing a true Christian minister should always be looking to promote: Repentance leading to restoration. Instead of fostering repentance and encouraging restoration, Yarbrough jumps at the chance to do things like fund a divorce before even speaking with the husband being targeted. This is standard Yarbrough operating procedure. It is also how you build a “ministry” of damaged and dependent Woke disciples, a gang of which serve Yarbrough very well.Undermine Productive Communication
By cultivating anger in his disciples, encouraging them to assume the worst about their target, and provoking that target into hostility, Yarbrough then uses this “ministry”-agitated state to undermine any hope of productive communication between husband and wife.
He does this the way he does so many other things described here; by leading a disciple clearly in one direction while being just passive enough along the way to claim that all of this is really his disciple’s idea. In other words, he makes many major moves to fan the flames of rage and family destruction, then steps back and claims that he is little more than a caring observer standing by to offer help to another who “made up their mind” to do these things all by themselves.
One of the most vile and corrosive things Yarbrough has done in this case is encourage the cessation of any meaningful conversation between me and my wife for nearly two years now. In hindsight it is now clear that she and I never had a real conversation once Yarbrough wrote the check for our divorce. Every communication is defined and constrained by hostile legal processes Yarbrough paid to launch and everything my “ministry”-influenced wife has to say is loaded with lies and rage. (Like the lies addressed here via polygraph.)
I would give anything to have one real, non-hostile conversation with her. Yarbrough has promoted so much rage and destruction at this point that it will take a miracle to ever have that conversation with my wife, but I still hold out hope. As mentioned earlier, I believe in those kinds of miracles because I believe in the Gospel. The true Gospel, as opposed to the counterfeit religion being preached through Yarbrough’s “ministry”.Corrupt the Court Process, then Cite the Court Process
Yarbrough and his Woke “Christian ministry” employ a simple three-step approach to court and public opinion manipulation that has been popular with scheming religious groups since the Pharisees of old used it to great effect roughly 2,000 years ago:
First, blatantly lie to the court and other authorities in a manner calculated to do maximum damage. (Like the worst accusations Team Yarbrough hurled my way, which I have now addressed via polygraph testing.)
Second, use the fundamentally corrupted (by your lies) court process to get a “win” in court.
Third, in the aftermath of your direct diarrhetic dump on The Ninth Commandment and subsequent turning of justice on its head, you are free and clear to point to “the court” as the one responsible for the results (based on the massive lies that you intentionally fed into it), and how all good Christians should honor and respect “the courts’ decision”.
After being thoroughly discipled by Yarbrough in this approach, my wife now uses it regularly.
Step 1: Under Yarbrough’s guidance, she lies blatantly to the court (as we will cover in detail and with polygraph-enhanced clarity).
Step 2: Yarbrough finances and guides her lie-founded case to a “win” in court that secures terrible consequences for the children and for me. (Many of these will be catalogued in future posts as necessary.)
Finally, in Step 3 she follows Yarbrough’s lead by painting herself as the good and noble “abuse victim” citizen who is dutifully “honoring the courts’ decision” after feeding that court massive lies and using Yarbrough’s “ministry” playbook to fundamentally undermine the court’s pursuit of truth and justice.
Using Past Good Works as Cover for Current Abuses
Yarbrough’s “ministry” counts on the many good things that it has actually done in the past to serve as a shield from criticism. Credit for past good deeds is banked so that the “ministry” can use it to basically purchase indulgences allowing it to shamelessly abuse justice whenever it deems necessary, like a sort of Karma bank for sociopaths. In this, Yarbrough is not unlike the Catholic priest who does 100 truly great things for others while also literally screwing a choirboy or two. Same principle. Not very “Reformed”, and not at all “Christian”, but it is how these abusers operate.
[For those who think it inappropriate to make comparisons using language like that in the previous paragraph, I couldn’t disagree more. Yarbrough literally acts to destroy marriages in brazen and bizarrely unbiblical ways. He causes catastrophic damage to many children along the way, and he promotes the kinds of lies that literally cause the death of targeted men (via suicide in many instances). His actions are the lowest of low and they must be recognized as such.]
My wife was an honest woman before coming under the influence of Yarbrough. Prior to her connection deepening with Yarbrough in 2022, my wife had never lied about anything that I know of. She was a remarkably honest woman. Yet since becoming connected with Yarbrough and his “ministry”, she has become willing and even eager to lie often and about the most serious things – the kinds of things that destroy some men to the point that they become suicidal.
Polygraph Testing and Separating Truth from Lies
To help prevent this from being taken as a mere “he said, she said” or “he said, they said” presentation, I have been tested professionally via polygraph and my answers have been found to be truthful on every question asked in every test taken. (No do-overs or failed answers of any kind on any test. Just 100% truthfulness.) I look forward to sharing all of the polygraph-tested answers to each and every major lie spun under Yarbrough’s influence, but for the sake of time and efficiency in this initial post, I will be focusing on polygraph test results aimed directly at the three lies that were most critical to the unbiblical divorce case promoted by Tim Yarbrough.
Three core lies at the heart of the Yarbrough-promoted divorce case are:
The “sexual abuse/exposure” claim. Team Yarbrough has made much use of a completely fictional story about how I “exposed myself” repeatedly and “for an extended period of time.” In fact, I never exposed myself at all to anyone for any amount of time as claimed repeatedly in court documents that Yarbrough’s “ministry” helped my wife to craft and encouraged her to file. This point alone constitutes a serious abuse of truth, justice, and the crystal-clear biblical standards embodied in Christ and expressed in The Ninth Commandment.
The “controlling/abusive patriarch” claim Exhibit A: The prevailing theme employed in the Yarbrough-promoted divorce centered on the claim that I was “controlling” and “abusing” my wife in very specific ways. One of two proofs offered repeatedly was my wife’s detailed testimony that I had controlled her ability to leave the house by keeping the keys to our only vehicle at the time in my possession and only allowing her to go where I wanted when I wanted. This is and has always been complete BS, as my wife knew full well when she was led by Yarbrough’s “ministry” to make the false claim anyway because it fit so neatly into their “controlling/abusive patriarch” template.
The fact is that my wife not only had easy access, but preferred access to our vehicle, and she knows it. Any time she wanted to use the van, she got it, and without any grief from me at all. I was happy for it to be that way. That’s what I was working for. I cannot emphasize this point enough: She had preferred access to our vehicle during the time that she claimed the exact opposite in Yarbrough-promoted legal actions.The “controlling/abusive patriarch” claim Exhibit B: Another particularly bizarre false claim made repeatedly under oath by my wife while guided by this FPCNA Elder was the accusation that I was so “controlling” that I kept certain rooms and closets locked using keys that were only in my possession so that I could control not only who could move around freely in the house, but whether or not my wife would even be able to access food stored in one of those rooms. This mind-blowingly vicious and meticulously detailed lie was repeatedly shared as a key part of the Team Yarbrough narrative.
This claim was also complete BS. My wife always had her own key to every door in the house (few of which were ever locked) and easy access to additional keys to the same locks. Yet slapping this lie into The Narrative of an abusive/controlling patriarch was way too tempting and fit very smoothly into the justice abusing mission of Yarbrough’s “ministry”, so they went all-in on it.
I have focused on these three claims (for now) because they were so prominently featured in the courtroom testimony and court documents that Yarbrough’s “ministry” allies helped my wife to craft. These three lies did incalculable damage in court.
I have passed polygraph tests pertaining to each of these major lies promoted by my Yarbrough-influenced wife. I have proven truthful in these tests in my claims that:
My wife had priority access to our family vehicle at the times she claimed I was “controlling” and “abusing” her by keeping the vehicle from her.
My wife had keys to every door in the house, in direct contradiction to her long, detailed accusations of my “controlling” and “abusing” her by having locks on doors that she could not open herself.
I never exposed myself to anyone at any time as claimed in false accusations repeated (often in excruciating and emotion-drenched detail) by my wife while under Yarbrough’s wing.
My wife knew full well that she had run of the house, had priority access to our vehicle, and was able to do anything she wanted. I never denied her request to go anywhere or do anything that she wanted to do, and I don’t regret that at all. I often watched the kids until late at night (2-3 in the morning sometimes) so that she could go out to meet for drinks with girlfriends, and I was happy to do it.
You would be hard pressed to find any husband in any Christian community, much less a Reformed community, that was more accommodating than I was with my wife. And my accommodation was not begrudging. It was happily offered all the time, which is what makes Yarbrough’s abuses all the more disgusting.
These false claims were used to manipulate courts and justice in the most dramatic ways, including taking our five children from their home and stealing them away to Alabama where Yarbrough’s “ministry” could keep them isolated from their father – an isolation that would not have happened apart from these vulgar lies.
One revelation that should be plain at this point: The reason Yarbrough never reached out to me at all before promoting and funding the divorce is that the truth never mattered to him. It never mattered what I had to say or how many lie detector tests I could pass on these subjects while his new disciple would fail the same tests on the same questions.
Yarbrough never cared about truth. At least not enough to pursue it biblically. He seems to have only cared about the opportunity to continue building his “ministry”, ego, and reputation …no matter the cost to justice and my family, including five amazing little children who have been incredibly traumatized by his Woke religion BS.
At this point, two possible next steps seem clear:
To help show that Yarbrough may not have led my wife to lie and abuse justice as described here, my wife should take a polygraph test precisely addressing the same three claims that I address here. Not similar questions or alternative questions, but precise questions confirming her exact claims as made under oath in court documents and courtroom testimony. (One of Yarbrough’s favorite gimmicks is to avoid answering difficult questions by redirecting to a question that he’d rather answer, so we need to be sure none of that YBS flies here.)
This test should be administered by the same 30+ year active law-enforcement officer that administered mine (whose report is noted at the end of this post), or someone similarly credentialed and licensed in the State of Tennessee
…or…Because she knows (and has always known) that her claims were lies from the start and that she would never be able to pass a polygraph test along those lines, she could repent and find the relief and restoration that comes on the other side of that supernaturally beautiful and liberating act.
I am not waiting to pounce. I am eager to forgive, just as we are all eager to be forgiven.
All that is required is repentance.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see something biblically beautiful like that finally happen in this case?
Unfortunately, “ministries” like Yarbrough’s have a deeply vested interest in preventing that from happening. For those who have worked so hard and built so much on a mountain of lies like the one described here, repentance over those lies poses an existential threat to their ego, their reputation, and their “ministry”.
Click here to read Part 2: Tim Yarbrough’s War on the Ninth Commandment
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